CHAPTER X. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT

Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in
temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and
in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He
had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and
equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if
the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and
figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and
wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible
fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity,
seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again
until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor
clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather,
like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel
that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find
nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas, for his own soul,
if these were what he sought!

Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning
blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us
say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from
Bunyan's awful doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the
pilgrim's face. The soil where this dark miner was working had
perchance shown indications that encouraged him.

"This man," said he, at one such moment, to himself, "pure as
they deem him--all spiritual as he seems--hath inherited a
strong animal nature from his father or his mother. Let us dig a
little further in the direction of this vein!"

Then after long search into the minister's dim interior, and
turning over many precious materials, in the shape of high
aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure
sentiments, natural piety, strengthened by thought and study, and
illuminated by revelation--all of which invaluable gold was
perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker--he would turn
back, discouraged, and begin his quest towards another point. He
groped along as stealthily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary
an outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only
half asleep--or, it may be, broad awake--with purpose to
steal the very treasure which this man guards as the apple of his
eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor would
now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his
presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his
victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of
nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would
become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had
thrust itself into relation with him. But Old Roger
Chillingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive;
and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there
the physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathising, but never
intrusive friend.

Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's
character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick
hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all
mankind. Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize
his enemy when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still
kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving he old
physician in his study, or visiting the laboratory, and, for
recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were
converted into drugs of potency.

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the
sill of the open window, that looked towards the grave-yard, he
talked with Roger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining
a bundle of unsightly plants.

"Where," asked he, with a look askance at them--for it was the
clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked
straight forth at any object, whether human or inanimate, "where,
my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark,
flabby leaf?"

"Even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician,
continuing his employment. "They are new to me. I found them
growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of
the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon
themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his
heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried
with him, and which he had done better to confess during his
lifetime."

"Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly
for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up
out of a buried heart, to make manifest, an outspoken crime?"

"That, good sir, is but a phantasy of yours," replied the
minister. "There can be, if I forbode aright, no power, short of
the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by
type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human
heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must
perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be
revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to
understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then
to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. That,
surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless
I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual
satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting,
on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A
knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest
solution of that problem. And, I conceive moreover, that the
hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of, will yield
them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy
unutterable."

"Then why not reveal it here?" asked Roger Chillingworth,
glancing quietly aside at the minister. "Why should not the
guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this unutterable solace?"

"They mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast,
as if afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. "Many, many a
poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on the
death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation. And
ever, after such an outpouring, oh, what a relief have I witnessed in
those sinful brethren! even as in one who at last draws free
air, after a long stifling with his own polluted breath. How can
it be otherwise? Why should a wretched man--guilty, we will
say, of murder--prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his
own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the
universe take care of it!"

"Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm
physician.

"True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But not
to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept
silent by the very constitution of their nature. Or--can we
not suppose it?--guilty as they may be, retaining,
nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they
shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of
men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no
evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own
unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures,
looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all
speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid
themselves."

"These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth, with
somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture
with his forefinger. "They fear to take up the shame that
rightfully belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for
God's service--these holy impulses may or may not coexist in
their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has
unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed
within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them not lift
heavenward their unclean hands! If they would serve their
fellowmen, let them do it by making manifest the power and
reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential
self-abasement! Would thou have me to believe, O wise and
pious friend, that a false show can be better--can be more for
God's glory, or man' welfare--than God's own truth? Trust me,
such men deceive themselves!"

"It may be so," said the young clergyman, indifferently, as
waiving a discussion that he considered irrelevant or
unseasonable. He had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from
any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous
temperament.--"But, now, I would ask of my well-skilled
physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have profited
by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine?"

Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear,
wild laughter of a young child's voice, proceeding from the
adjacent burial-ground. Looking instinctively from the open
window--for it was summer-time--the minister beheld Hester
Prynne and little Pearl passing along the footpath that traversed
the enclosure. Pearl looked as beautiful as the day, but was in
one of those moods of perverse merriment which, whenever they
occurred, seemed to remove her entirely out of the sphere of
sympathy or human contact. She now skipped irreverently from one
grave to another; until coming to the broad, flat, armorial
tombstone of a departed worthy--perhaps of Isaac Johnson
himself--she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother's
command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously,
little Pearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock
which grew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she
arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated
the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was,
tenaciously adhered. Hester did not pluck them off.

Roger Chillingworth had by this time approached the window and
smiled grimly down.

"There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for
human ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that
child's composition," remarked he, as much to himself as to his
companion. "I saw her, the other day, bespatter the Governor
himself with water at the cattle-trough in Spring Lane. What, in
heaven's name, is she? Is the imp altogether evil? Hath she
affections? Hath she any discoverable principle of being?"

"None, save the freedom of a broken law," answered Mr.
Dimmesdale, in a quiet way, as if he had been discussing the
point within himself, "Whether capable of good, I know not."

The child probably overheard their voices, for, looking up to the
window with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and
intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Rev. Mr.
Dimmesdale. The sensitive clergyman shrank, with nervous dread,
from the light missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her
little hands in the most extravagant ecstacy. Hester Prynne,
likewise, had involuntarily looked up, and all these four
persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till the
child laughed aloud, and shouted--"Come away, mother! Come
away, or yonder old black man will catch you! He hath got hold
of the minister already. Come away, mother or he will catch
you! But he cannot catch little Pearl!"

So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking
fantastically among the hillocks of the dead people, like a
creature that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried
generation, nor owned herself akin to it. It was as if she had
been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be
permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself without
her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.

"There goes a woman," resumed Roger Chillingworth, after a pause,
"who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of
hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is
Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet
letter on her breast?"

"I do verily believe it," answered the clergyman. "Nevertheless,
I cannot answer for her. There was a look of pain in her face
which I would gladly have been spared the sight of. But still,
methinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to
show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it up
in his heart."

There was another pause, and the physician began anew to examine
and arrange the plants which he had gathered.

"You inquired of me, a little time agone," said he, at length,
"my judgment as touching your health."

"I did," answered the clergyman, "and would gladly learn it.
Speak frankly, I pray you, be it for life or death."

"Freely then, and plainly," said the physician, still busy with
his plants, but keeping a wary eye on Mr. Dimmesdale, "the
disorder is a strange one; not so much in itself nor as outwardly
manifested,--in so far, at least as the symptoms have been laid
open to my observation. Looking daily at you, my good sir, and
watching the tokens of your aspect now for months gone by, I
should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not so sick but
that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to cure
you. But I know not what to say, the disease is what I seem to
know, yet know it not."

"You speak in riddles, learned sir," said the pale minister,
glancing aside out of the window.

"Then, to speak more plainly," continued the physician, "and I
crave pardon, sir, should it seem to require pardon, for this
needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask as your friend, as
one having charge, under Providence, of your life and physical
well being, hath all the operations of this disorder been fairly
laid open and recounted to me?"

"How can you question it?" asked the minister. "Surely it were
child's play to call in a physician and then hide the sore!"

"You would tell me, then, that I know all?" said Roger
Chillingworth, deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright with
intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's face.
"Be it so! But again! He to whom only the outward and physical
evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which
he is called upon to cure. A bodily disease, which we look upon
as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a
symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. Your pardon once
again, good sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence.
You, sir, of all men whom I have known, are
he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and
identified, so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the
instrument."

"Then I need ask no further," said the clergyman, somewhat
hastily rising from his chair. "You deal not, I take it, in
medicine for the soul!"

"Thus, a sickness," continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in
an unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption, but standing
up and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with
his low, dark, and misshapen figure,--"a sickness, a sore
place, if we may so call it, in your spirit hath immediately its
appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame. Would you,
therefore, that your physician heal the bodily evil? How may
this be unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in
your soul?"

"No, not to thee! not to an earthly physician!" cried Mr.
Dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes, full and bright,
and with a kind of fierceness, on old Roger Chillingworth. "Not
to thee! But, if it be the soul's disease, then do I commit
myself to the one Physician of the soul! He, if it stand with
His good pleasure, can cure, or he can kill. Let Him do with me
as, in His justice and wisdom, He shall see good. But who art
thou, that meddlest in this matter? that dares thrust himself
between the sufferer and his God?"

With a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room.

"It is as well to have made this step," said Roger Chillingworth
to himself, looking after the minister, with a grave smile.
"There is nothing lost. We shall be friends again anon. But
see, now, how passion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth
him out of himself! As with one passion so with another. He
hath done a wild thing ere now, this pious Master Dimmesdale,
in the hot passion of his heart. "

It proved not difficult to re-establish the intimacy of the two
companions, on the same footing and in the same degree as
heretofore. The young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy,
was sensible that the disorder of his nerves had hurried him into
an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in
the physician's words to excuse or palliate. He marvelled,
indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust back the kind
old man, when merely proffering the advice which it was his duty
to bestow, and which the minister himself had expressly sought.
With these remorseful feelings, he lost no time in making the
amplest apologies, and besought his friend still to continue the
care which, if not successful in restoring him to health, had, in
all probability, been the means of prolonging his feeble
existence to that hour. Roger Chillingworth readily assented,
and went on with his medical supervision of the minister; doing
his best for him, in all good faith, but always quitting the
patient's apartment, at the close of the professional interview,
with a mysterious and puzzled smile upon his lips. This
expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's presence, but grew
strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold.

"A rare case," he muttered. "I must needs look deeper into it.
A strange sympathy betwixt soul and body! Were it only for the
art's sake, I must search this matter to the bottom."

It came to pass, not long after the scene above
recorded, that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, noon-day, and
entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his
chair, with a large black-letter volume open before him on the
table. It must have been a work of vast ability in the
somniferous school of literature. The profound depth of the
minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one
of those persons whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful,
and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To
such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now
withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his chair when old
Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came
into the room. The physician advanced directly in front of his
patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the
vestment, that hitherto had always covered it even from the
professional eye.

Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred.

After a brief pause, the physician turned away.

But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and honor! With what a
ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by
the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the
whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even riotously
manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his
arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor!
Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that moment of his
ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan comports
himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won
into his kingdom.

But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was
the trait of wonder in it!